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Month: December 2014

In my last post, I mentioned all of the “Christmas” shopping I did in getting all of the parts for my buried services. I’m deep into digging (more on that later), and I actually am looking forward to spending some dedicated time over the Christmas and New Years holiday to make some really good progress.

As usual after Thanksgiving, our neighbors decorated their homes with lights, and it really makes the street look nice. We would always participate, putting up some tasteful white lights and some garlands. In fact, my remodeling plans call for an exterior plug, controlled by a switch, that will be installed expressly for Christmas lights.

But that is in the future, and for now, I felt I had to come up with something that was appropriate for the season, yet fit our “decor” of a torn up yard, complete with piles of dirt and trenches. Honestly, the exterior of the house and property will look no worse than it does at the moment. What a friggin’ mess! Then, in a flash of insight, I had the answer!

My lovely wife always encourages me to “use what I have”. I think this comes from her Scottish heritage, and I appreciate and admire her way of making elegance out of frugality. In rising to that challenge, I took a look at these traffic barriers that I had, and it gave me an idea. I was required to buy traffic barriers with flashing lights for the dumpster(s) that I needed to put on the street, marking where the dumpster was, lest an errant driver not see it and run into it at night. I swear that the drivers around here are so fu#&*@’n dumb that they don’t need any assistance from alcohol to run into a dumpster in broad daylight. And swear I do. Profusely. When I’m driving.

Back to the point. These traffic barriers have flashing lights. And, I have my strings of Martha Stewart LED outdoor Christmas lights. AND I have a bunch of “CAUTION” tape. What a great combination! So, I placed the traffic barriers in a tasteful manner across the front of my yard, strung my Martha Stewart lights tastefully between them, secured the assembly with tasteful CAUTION tape, and put the lights on a timer that I had from my (now defunct) pond. This arrangement has the added advantage of discouraging errant people on the adjacent sidewalk from stumbling onto my property and breaking their legs when they trip into one of the many trenches that await their drunken follies. (OK, they have to be drunk, but that is not outside the realm of possibilities.)

Although I try to elicit visual pictures with my writing, this video is worth 454 words. Good thing this blog has a word counter, otherwise I’d be guilty of false representation! (OK that’s 472 words).

Everyone have a wonderful holiday season, and I promise I’ll have more posts in the near future.